Alumna Focuses on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy

Jessica Scanlan Bailey ’01 is the sustainable development program officer for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York, where she focuses on climate change.

Her position involves allocating funds for research, advocacy, communications, and other efforts to organizations focused on advancing clean energy policies at the state and federal level.

Bailey first became interested in climate change and sustainable energy when she joined the Fund in 2004 as Special Assistant to the President.

“Energy became the connective tissue for all of the issues I had become passionate about as a student—human rights, security, policy, and international relations,” she says. “I realized that our efforts toward peace would be compromised unless we figure out what to do about climate change.”

In 2012, Bailey took a part-time professional leave to work for the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority in Connecticut, where she is helping to create financial products, programs, and policies that attract private capital to the state’s clean energy market.

Bailey graduated from Notre Dame with degrees in government and anthropology and a minor in peace studies. After graduation, she was awarded a Herbert Scoville, Jr. Peace Fellowship to work in the Nuclear/Security Program of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C. She later earned a master’s degree in international relations from Yale University.

She serves on the boards of the Scoville Fellowship Program as well as on those of several national and global organizations working on clean energy and climate change.